Kaszak, Emanuel spending freely

February 22, 2002|By David Mendell, Tribune staff reporter.

Few political offices are as highly coveted as an open congressional seat, especially one that encompasses prime real estate along Chicago's North Side lakefront, a thicket of northwest suburbs and territory around O'Hare International Airport.

Indeed, two of eight candidates running in the Democratic primary for the 5th Congressional District are likely to spend a combined $2.5 million to win the post. The race to fill the seat being vacated by Rod Blagojevich, who is running for governor, was expected to be one of the hottest in the country--and it has not disappointed.

Candidates Rahm Emanuel and Nancy Kaszak are locked in a heated battle that overshadows the rest of the field. Three Republicans are seeking their party's nomination, but the district is overwhelmingly Democratic. So winning the March 19 primary is tantamount to victory in November.

Kaszak, 51, formerly a state representative and Chicago Park District lawyer, portrays herself as a longtime community activist in touch with her Polish heritage. But she also casts Emanuel as a wealthy, carpet-bagging operative from Washington as ill-fitted in the largely blue-collar district as television's snobbish Frasier Crane would be at a Chicago Wolves hockey game.

"I am this district; he's the Beltway," said Kaszak, who reminds audiences repeatedly that she has lived in the district for 25 years.

Emanuel, 42, a senior adviser to former President Bill Clinton turned investment banker, fashions himself as an experienced political warrior with a proven record of establishing important Democratic policies from gun control to health care for poor children. Emanuel lived on the North Side until a teenager, when the family moved to Wilmette. He settled in Ravenswood in 1998 after helping Clinton weather the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

It's all made for classic political theater and promises to become even more theatrical as the pair launch paid media campaigns. Emanuel, who expects to spend about $1.5 million, started running television commercials Tuesday. Kaszak, with a budget of $800,000 to $1 million, won't hit the air until shortly before the primary.

The two leading candidates vary only slightly on the issues--agreeing substantively on 45 of 49 questions on a political group's questionnaire--but they vary greatly in style.

The brash Emanuel is an ambitious whirling dervish, rising at 5 a.m. each day to exercise before pushing his aides from one event to the next like a jockey in the final stretch of the Kentucky Derby. A Mother Jones magazine profile once noted he wastes no time on introspection and described his relaxing Sunday bicycling as so manic that he "rides as if he is being chased by the Headless Horseman."

Between campaign stops, he works his cell phone incessantly, and he spends evenings holding Clinton-style coffee klatches with voters and contributors.

"He's a born negotiator," said his uncle, Les Smulevitz, a Chicago policeman Emanuel mentions often to voters. "He knows politics from the ground up."

With his Washington knowledge and experience, Emanuel promises he will instantly become one of the top 25 most influential members of Congress--"a voice, not just a vote." Some proposals: drug-testing for all parolees, outlawing oil drilling under Lake Michigan, expanding Brady Law gun-buying restrictions to cover adults who committed serious crimes as juveniles.

Kaszak's style is more leisurely, and she approaches campaign stops more as friendly social events than press-the-flesh affairs.

She gropes for answers when pressed about policy specifics and her somewhat inconsistent voting record in Springfield, especially on crime measures and the death penalty. But she exudes sincerity when discussing the financial burden on seniors for prescription drugs or how to combat teenage date rape.

Emanuel, striving to remake his image from political shark to caring populist, helped perfect go-for-the-jugular campaigning in Clinton's Little Rock, Ark., headquarters in 1992. But Kaszak herself is no stranger to the approach.

Running against Blagojevich for the same seat in 1996, Kaszak lost favor with many Democrats when, without proof, she accused him of strong-arming city employees for donations. Days later, she lost by 12,000 votes.

With almost one in five district voters of Polish descent, Kaszak is courting the Polish vote and goes so far as to tailor the pronunciation of her name to fit the audience. Around Poles, it's "Kah-shock." To others, it's "Kay-zack."

On the issues, Kaszak leans slightly left of Emanuel, who in the White House helped push Clinton to the political center. For example, Kaszak favors a living wage law, whereas Emanuel said he backs it in spirit but considers it a political nonstarter on the federal level.